As an old country saying puts it, “Money is like manure – it does no good unless you spread it around.”

Yet, America’s corporate and political leaders have intentionally been shoveling wealth into an ever-bigger pile for those at the top. They’ve gotten away with this by lying to the great majority, which has seen its share of America’s prosperity steadily disappear. Yes, they’ve told us, the rich are getting richer, but that’s just the natural workings of the new global economy, in which financial elites are rewarded for their exceptional talents, innovation, and bold risk-taking.

Horse dooties. The massive redistribution of America’s wealth from the many to the few is happening because the rich and their political puppets have rigged the system. Years of subsidized offshoring and downsizing, gutting labor rights, monkeywrenching the tax code, legalizing financial finagling, dismantling social programs, increasing the political dominance of corporate cash – these and other self-serving acts of the moneyed powers have created the conveyor belt that’s moving our wealth from the grassroots to the penthouses.

Not since the Gilded Age, which preceded and precipitated the Great Depression, have so few amassed so much of our nation’s riches. Having learned nothing from 1929’s devastating crash, nor from their own bank failures in 2008 that crushed our economy, the wealthiest of the wealthy fully intend to keep taking more for themselves at our expense.

Now, however, the people are onto their lies. In an October poll, two-thirds of Americans support increased taxes on millionaires, an end to corporate tax subsidies, and policies to more evenly distribute the wealth we all help create. This is rising egalitarianism shows the true American character, and it’s changing our politics – for the better.

This piece is just filler. Tried to find something meaningful and nonpolitical to fill space between political rants. I mean, honestly, even I get tired of the cynical sarcastic political stuff I’ve been posting. Way too much campaign season coming up.

I want to mention “Reaganomics, trickle-down, and public safety, all in the same short post, so let’s talk about a “tipping point” in American history.

That point would be when Reagan ‘busted’ the Air Traffic Controller’s union. That single action began the long decline that American workers, of all varieties have been on ever since. It also marked a sharp increase in industrialists gaining more and more power over politics and government.

Reagan didn’t invent this stuff, it has always been a corporate tactic to bust unions and buy politicians, but Ronnie put such a spin on it, that it made people feel that it was okay and even damned patriotic.

Good, reliable data, charted and graphed, shows that time as the starting point of the decades long rise of corporate profits. At the same time that profits rose and the wealthy thrived, blue collar worker’s ‘real’ wages stagnated.

This entire scenario puts all in our society in an increasingly dangerous class-warfare that effects public safety. Our workers and therefor our society face a new phenomena: the “flat world”.

In conclusion; The corporate buyout of American government has been complete for may years. Fox News conservatives would have you believe that regulation (protecting the public) is the big problem causing poor job growth, but that’s just not the case.

It is just this simple; we may pay $10 per hour, foreign companies may pay $10 a day. Our wages stay at the same level or decline while theirs slowly creep up. We are on our way to being the same waged employees as China and Mexico, or we will have no jobs at all.

Our middle class is disappearing into poverty while our corporate, financial and government masters get pushed up even farther into wealth and power.

Solutions? Hmmmm….

List a few common sense ideas to save our middle/lower economic classes, and I’ll bet I can find the Fox News footage demonizing those same ideas as unpatriotic, nanny-state government that is just seeking to hinder business from growing and employing here.

Middle/lower classes of white people are flocking to conservatism, drinking their kool-aid, and sealing their fate in serfdom for generations to come.

Stupid is, as stupid does.

The proliferation of talking heads and lobbyists leading the stupid into their own demise on the many new forms of media, almost guarantees the continuing gridlock in government, and class warfare from the top on the bottom.

Any progressive or populist solutions to the nation’s problems are always crushed by ‘Captain Obvious”, that is, by the overwhelming amount of money being spent on propaganda (talk radio, Fox News, PAC’s, etc.) that plays to the average person’s most base emotions while ensuring nothing sensible and logical is ever presented to them.

Got an idea to save the middle-class?

Good luck. It’ll happen when Hell freezes over!

You unpatriotic, communist, socialistic dullard.

You’re just another “Meathead”, you hippy-type character from the ‘All In the Family’ sitcom.

This was sent to me as one of those “chain” emails. You know, if you pass this on to 20 friends we can change the world. Sorry, I just don’t do the forwarding thing. I did find this interesting enough to share here though. If you enjoy this, reblog it, stumble it, recommend it, or whatever you do to show your approval. Thanks ~ sekanblogger

Today I stumbled across an old acquaintance from my camp counselor days and found out that she has two children with autistic spectrum disorder and a third with developmental delays. As you may or may nor know by now, I have a child with ASD as well. Apparently this old acquaintance is a frothing liberal just like me. This got me to thinking: Is it possible to have a special needs child and still be a Right Wing ideologue? And if so, how?There are millions of children and adults with ASD in varying degrees of severity and dozens of other kinds of physical and mental afflictions. Many, if not most, require some kind of special attention, whether it be home based services like my son received, a special school or a home for adults that cannot care for themselves. These services require special training and is not necessarily something you can take a class or two or read a book to learn. Especially if the ASD is as severe as it was in the case of my nephew who had it much worse than my son.

So who pays for it?

Well, in my case, the State of NY picks up the tab in the form of Early Intervention. They provided a speech therapist, an occupational therapist (for fine motor coordination), a physical therapist (gross motor coordination) and a teacher that spent 10 hours a week with him. Now, I am a stay at home father (voluntary, TYVM) and I have the time this kind of help would require of me but I don’t have the training. The overwhelming majority of parents don’t have the luxury of having one parent at home and they certainly don’t have the specialized knowledge. So let’s say that you are a “small government” conservative that hates having your tax dollars spent on other people (because you are a dick). How do you go about taking care of your special needs children? These services would be quite expensive to pay for and medical insurance doesn’t cover autism last I looked. So what do you do? Let your child languish in the prison that is autism? Hope you find a private charity that just happens to provide ALL of the necessary services? Or do you rely on the government to build a system of professionals that can help parents and their children without incurring crushing debt?

What would be the pinion of a conservative? We don’t even need to ask. We know it. It’s already a conservative mantra that people without children shouldn’t have to contribute to public schools. Just like people with jobs shouldn’t have to help those without. Just like those who can eat three meals a day shouldn’t have to help those who can’t. Just like those who are Christian shouldn’t have to help those who are not. It takes exactly zero effort to extend that philosophy of greed and selfishness to not wanting to pay for special needs children if they don’t have one of their own. Some of them don’t even think autism is real.

The Conservative creed: I got mine, screw you!

Autism does not discriminate. So presumably half of all autistic children have conservative parents. Do they all throw their children to the wolves? Or do they turn to the government for professional help. I’m guessing they turn to the professionals since most of them can’t possibly afford to go it alone.

How do they reconcile that with their hatred of all things government? It’s easy enough to ignore all the stuff government does in the background. No one thinks about how clean the air and water is compared to 70 years ago. No one remembers that rivers used to routinely burst into flame from all the pollution. No one wonders what life would be like without firefighters and police. These services are essentially invisible to us and so the Right Wing pretends that they don’t exist or that they would be just fine if the government didn’t do it.

These are, of course, childish people putting their fingers in their ears and yelling “LALALALA! I HATE GOVERNMENT!”

But they can’t pretend the services for special needs is invisible. It’s right there, in their face, day in and day out. They KNOW that they need it and they KNOW that, without the government, They wouldn’t have it. Do they pretend that they are a special case? Or that it’s THEIR tax dollars, knowing full well that they’re receiving far more than they put in? Or do they just rationalize that they deserve it for being a good American and those lazy Negros welfare people shouldn’t get a dime for their welfare kids?

How do they choke down that kind of hypocrisy on a daily basis? How do they vote for politicians that they know, for a fact, want to cut the very services that they desperately rely on for their children?

Is it even possible to be that stupid?

So my question to you, the reader, is: Do you know any Far Right, Glenn Beck loving, Fox News watching, Tea Party loving parents that rely heavily on government services for their child and how do they rationalize it?

I did state previously that this lighthouse tour was free until end of August. I got it wrong. Clare county council already have a nominal entry fee in place – €3.00 per visiting adult, children are free but, really, they don't want to see your children. I believe they live in dread of being found to have been in breach the safety regulations, or maybe it's the fear of compensation claims? I don't know which really; the latter I suspect but my vi … Read More

Just a brief exposure to an image of the American flag shifts voters, even Democrats, to Republican beliefs, attitudes and voting behavior even though most don't believe it will impact their politics, according to a new two-year study just published in the scholarly Psychological Science… For some reason, this comes as a surprise to a lot of people. Republicans have used patriotic symbolism for a long, long time, and their advertising strategy … Read More